I'm a C#/.net/Visual Studio noob. I inherited a half-completed C# application for a mobile phone. In the course of debugging, I came across several half-finished classes that don't seem to be used anywhere else in the code. Is there a way to get determine if a class definition is instantiated anywhere?
The quickest way (in Visual Studio) is to right-click the type name and select Find all references from the context menu. This will show you all places where that type is referenced in the current solution.
You should get Resharper - it will show "dead" code in grey and make refactoring a lot easier! You may also prefer CodeRush.
Without ReSharper or a similar tool, you can always do a file search for "new ClassName(" in the entire solution.
I usually start with Shift-F12 (or right-click on class name and select "Find All References")
Unless you know the code, and the modules that may use it., CodeRush or Resharper are your better choices.
None of the other answers mentioned the modifiers which can be applied to classes/functions. You certainly want to take scope into consideration before deleting code. You may have other assemblies which use classes/functions.
Remove them from the project and let your unit tests (ahem, you have those right?) and your QA team (you have that right?) identify the problems.
Jokes aside, if it's SO obvious that it's not complete, why not simply remove the code and recompile?
The next steps I would take would be to use a tool like "Find All References" or Resharper (does it even have a feature to do that?)
You can list all the classes (searching for class [a-zA-Z0-9_]+), and then search for new <classname>. The ones not found at the second search are not used. Of course, a simple script in your favourite script language would help.
You'll need however to filter out the classes that are used as base classes of used classes.
Note that this way you'll not find the classes which are used only from unused classes, so several iterations might be needed. Moreover, if some two classes are using each other (but not used from outside), removing them might need additional effort.
Edit:
A better approach would be building dependency tree: for each of the classes you define which class is used by that class, and which class is a base class for that class. This way you find which classes are required for every single class. Then, you can define which classes are required (directly or indirectly) from the class containing Main. All other classes are "unreachable" and therefore not used.
This approach will however remove the classes instantiated by reflection. Well, there is no way to find out at compile time, which classes are going to be instantiated by reflection anyway.
Maybe using the ready tools (like others proposed) is a simpler alternative.
Related
I've made some changes to the class and it is located in some shared project, so it can be used in many websites. How can I determine which projects will be affected?
The cases when this is useful: I want to update only changed production servers or I want to understand, how harmful is my change.
Current solution (using resharper or only visual studio): find usages of class, then find usages of all usages, then find usages of usages of usages and so on. Is there any way to make it easier?
For methods you're changing you can put your cursor on the methodname and press ctrl+shift+alt+A and pick 'Incoming calls', this way you can see the whole hierarchy where this method is used. If you follow through those hierarchies you can find in which projects and classes this method in your shared project is used.
I want to add some methods in System.Net.HttpWebRequest class to suit my needs. I tried reflection but it is quite complicated that I need to alter many of its member class method as well.
I am debugging through .NET reference source and I could view the source code of those class. Is it possible for me to copy each of the related class source code and build my own class?
For some classes yes, but for many no.
.NET classes frequently use internal classes that are not exposed publicly, you would not only need to rebuild the class you are interested in but also rebuild all internal references too.
I would recommend not trying to do this and instead either using Extension Methods or if that does not solve your problem ask a new question describing the exact thing you are trying to accomplish and perhaps we can show you a easier way to do it.
Anything's possible.
You have the source code. You know how to copy and paste. Certainly it's possible you could adapt that code for your own purposes.
The question is; is it legal?
To answer that, you need only examine the license for the reference source. To that end, it's perfectly legal, assuming you comply with the MIT license (which is pretty lenient).
The next question is; should you? Probably not. Most likely, you could just add your desired functionality via a helper class or child class, or add new methods via Extension Methods.
My C# .NET solution files are a mess and I am trying to find a way of getting things in order.
I tried to put all close files together in the same folder I am creating for that purpose. For example, I put interfaces, abstract classes, and all their inherited classes at the same folder. By the way - when I do that, I need to write a "using" statement pointing to that folder so I can use those classes in other files (also a mess I guess).
Is there an elegant way of doing things more clean, and not a list of files that I find very confusing?
Is it a good idea to (let's say) open a abstract class file and add nested classes for all the classes derived from it?
Is there a way of telling the solution to automatically set the folder "using" statements above every class I create?
The best way is when your solution file system structure reflects your program architecture and not your code architecture.
For example: if you define an abstract class and after have entities that implement it: put them into the same "basket" (solution folder) if they make a part of the same software architectual unit.
In this case one by looking on your solution tree can see what is your architecture about (more or less) from very top view.
There are different ways to enforce the architecture vision, understanding and felling of the code file system. For example if you use some known frameworks, like NHibernate, or (say) ASP.NET MVC tend to call the things in the name the technolgy calls them, in this way one who is familiar with that technology can easily find itself in your architecture.
For example WPF force you define in code things in some way, but also you need to define byb the way Model, ModelView, View.. which you will do intuitively in seprate files. The technology enforcce you to define your file system in way it was thought.
By the way the topic you're asking for, is broad known dilema/question, not resolved, cuase the code is just characters sequence and nothing else.
Good luck.
It sounds like you're hitting the point where you actually need to break things up a bit, but you're resisting this because more files seems like more complexity. That's true to a point. But there's also a point where files just become big and unmanageable, which is where you might end up if you try to do nested classes.
Keeping code in different namespaces is actually a good thing--that's the "issue" you're running into with the folders and having to add using statements at the top of your files. Namespacing allows you to logically divide your code, and even occasionally reuse a class name, without stepping on other parts of your code base.
What version of Visual Studio are you using? One little known feature of Visual Studio is that it can automatically create the using directive when you type a class name. That would eliminate one pain point.
If I was in your shoes, I'd start looking for logical places to segment my code into different projects. You can definitely go overboard here as well, but it's pretty common to have:
A "core" project that contains your business logic and business objects.
UI projects for the different user interfaces you build, such as a website or Windows Forms app.
A datalayer project that handles all interactions with the database. Your business logic talks to the datalayer instead of directly to the database, which makes it easier to make changes to your database setup down the road.
As your code base grows, a tool like ReSharper starts to become really important. I work on a code base that has ~1 million lines and 10 or so projects in the solution, and I couldn't live without ReSharper's go-to-file navigation feature. It lets you hit a keyboard shortcut and start typing a file name and just jump to it when it finds a match. It's sort of like using Google to find information instead of trying to bookmark every interesting link you come across. Once I made this mental shift, navigating through the code base became so much easier.
Try using multiple projects in the same solution to bring order. Seperate projects for web, entity, data access, setup, testing, etc.
IF the files are in the same namespace you won't need a using statement. If you're breaking your code into multiple projects you'll need to reference the other projects with using statements.
Its up to you. Break things apart logically. Use subfolders where you deem necessary.
Not sure.
Yes, but you'll need to create a template. Search for tuturorials on that.
1) Your solution folders should match your namespace structure. Visual Studio is set up to work this way and will automatically create a matching namespace. Yes, this requires a using for stuff in the folders but that's what it's for.
So yes, group common stuff together under an appropriate namespace.
2) Yes, subclasses should probably live in the same namespace/folder as their abstract base, or a sub folder of it. I'm not sure if you mean all in the same file? If so I would say generally not unless they're very very simple. Different files, same folder.
3) Not that I'm aware of. If you right click the classname when you use it you can get Studio to automatically resolve it and add a using (Ctrl + . also does this)
I'm writing a library that has a bunch of classes in it which are intended to be used by multiple frontends (some frontends share the same classes). For each frontend, I am keeping a hand edited list of which classes (of a particular namespace) it uses. If the frontend tries to use a class that is not in this list, there will be runtime errors. My goal is to move these errors to compile time.
If any of you are curious, these are 'mapped' nhibernate classes. I'm trying to restrict which frontend can use what so that there is less spin up time, and just for my own sanity. There's going to be hundreds of these things eventually, and it will be really nice if there's a list somewhere that tells me which frontends use what that I'm forced to maintain. I can't seem to get away with making subclasses to be used by each frontend and I can't use any wrapper classes... just take that as a given please!
Ideally, I want visual studio to underline red the offending classes if someone dares to try and use them, with a nice custom error in the errors window. I also want them GONE from the intellisense windows. Is it possible to customize a project to do these things?
I'm also open to using a pre-build program to analyze the code for these sorts of things, although this would not be as nice. Does anyone know of tools that do this?
Thanks
Isaac
Let's say that you have a set of classes F. You want these classes to be visible only to a certain assembly A. Then you segregate these classes in F into a separate assembly and mark them as internal and set the InternalsVisibleTo on that assembly to true for this certain assembly A.
If you try to use these classes from any assembly A' that is not marked as InternalsVisibleTo from the assembly containing F, then you will get a compile-time error if you try to use any class from F in A'.
I also want them GONE from the intellisense windows. Is it possible to customize a project to do these things?
That happens with the solution I presented above as well. They are internal to the assembly containing F and not visible from any assembly A' not marked as InternalsVisibleTo in the assembly containing F.
However, I generally find that InternalsVisibleTo is a code smell (not always, just often).
You should club your classes into separate dlls / projects and only provide access to those dlls to front end projects that are 'appropriate' for it. This should be simple if your front-end and the group of classes it may use are logically related.
If not then I would say some thing smells fishy - probably your class design / approach needs a revisit.
I think you'll want to take a look at the ObsoleteAttribute: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.obsoleteattribute%28v=VS.100%29.aspx
I believe you can set IsError to true and it will issue an error on build time.
(not positive though)
As for the intellisense you can use EditorBrowseableAttribute: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.editorbrowsableattribute.aspx Or at least that is what seems to get decorated when I add a service reference and cannot see the members.
does anyone know of a way to split all classes in one solution into multiple files?
The point here is that I've inherited a project in which a few hundred files contain a thousand or so classes...
I'd like to be able to get to a 1 file per class approach..
Using resharper I can easily do this manually, but I'm guessing there must be a better way?
Kind regards
Frederik
You could try one of the ReSharper 5.0 nightly builds which allow you to do it across your whole solution. You can revert to ReSharper 4.5 (or whatever version you are using) afterwards.
GraemeF's answer is correct, but when you do that refactoring chances are you'll lose all source-control history for the existing classes. This might not be a problem for you (especially if the system you've inherited wasn't source-controlled!) but I've often found that line-annotated views of a class are very helpful for determining the intent behind a particular line.
ReSharper has the Ctrl-T shortcut to jump to a type name, and holding down Ctrl makes types clickable; that might be another way to solve your problem.